


Harry Potter Becomes a Gender Theorist

by nettlewine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler - Freeform, Philosophy, gender theory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 01:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1586771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nettlewine/pseuds/nettlewine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter abandons Gryffindor Tower for the ivory tower when he discovers gender theorist Judith Butler’s 1990 work <i>Gender Trouble</i>. Join Harry on his journey to preach the Butlerian gospel to his friends Ron and Hermione, who are painfully ignorant of the harmful social, political, and linguistic constructions that create and define their bodies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harry's Hunch

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Harry Potter Becomes a Communist](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/48989) by HardcoreCommie. 



> Inspired by the above work and, of course, the writings of Judith Butler.
> 
> Dedicated to G.H.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry finds some new summer reading material, and it's truly provocative.

How Harry Potter ever got his hands on such a book was truly mundane in comparison to the events that followed because of the book in question. He first came across it five years after its publication, right on the cusp of what would be his most emotionally compromising school year. It was early in the summer of 1995, and he was fifteen. The Dursleys’ neighbor Mrs. Figg – who was in charge of Harry for the day since Dudley had a wrestling tournament to attend with his parents – had just fed him so much stale chocolate cake that he could barely move and he was forced to resign himself to a few hours of lethargy. It must have been hours he'd laid there, the ugly floral couch in the sitting room too firm for his liking, the television on a news channel he only leant half an ear to.

It was, in essence, a lazy summer afternoon the likes of which Harry swore could drag on forever. The heat was almost unbearable, coming off the pavement in waves; Mrs. Figg’s sun-faded curtains fluttered in the feeble breeze given off by the plug-in fan she had set up in the sitting room some hours earlier. Harry’s t-shirt stuck to his skin and he couldn’t help but run a hand through his thick black hair every now and then in foolishly optimistic attempts at cooling off his scalp. He glanced around for something to do, or at the very least, something to stare at besides the water-stained ceiling above him.

Mrs. Figg, who had a penchant for spending hours on end in exactly the types of places a fifteen-year-old boy would most certainly despise, frequented the secondhand bookshop in Little Whinging; she had bookshelves upon bookshelves in her sitting room to show for it, mismatched ones full of worn paperbacks with broken spines and the odd smell that comes with being stored away for too long. Harry knew she hardly ever touched them; she had placed framed pictures of her legion of cats in front of entire sections of books so they could not be readily accessed. Many of them were what appeared to be extremely dry historical fictions, the sort of novels Harry knew Aunt Petunia had a habit of picking up, reading, and immediately discarding. _Nothing special_ , Harry thought.

But the air was thick with heat and Harry was fit to burst with boredom, and so he sat up on the couch and squinted through his glasses at some of the visible titles. The only one that stood out to him in any sort of manner was a stiff brown one called _Gender Trouble_. He reached out and tipped the book to get a glimpse of the front cover, pulling it off the shelf when he decided he needed a closer look.

Harry flipped the cover back. _Subjects of Sex / Gender / Desire_ , it read in bold letters. Harry whispered the words out loud to himself, unsure what sort of sex the book was referring to, but he figured it was worth it to take the plunge just in case. He had a hunch, and it was promising.

He turned the page.


	2. Harry Neglects to Make a Normative Claim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sure, Harry is beginning to see that gender inequality exists, but that descriptive claim is not enough for the hard-hitting Butler. He will need to step it up and pair it with a normative claim - that gender inequality should not exist - before he can truly move up the ladder of understanding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is just getting started. Buckle your seatbelts and keep reading / reccing. Thanks y'all.

Harry’s hunch couldn’t have been more wrong.

The book was full of stiff, academic prose the likes of which Harry had only ever seen in his History of Magic textbook. It was truly a challenge for him to get through: he had made seventeen mental notes by the end of the second page of words to look up, his palms were sweating, and worst of all, he had no idea who Michel Foucault was. Somehow, this felt like a crime.

As he dutifully made his way through the first section of the first chapter, a passage entitled “’Women’ as the Subject of Feminism”, Harry began to wonder if he had been missing out on multiple aspects of the human experience all along. He had never before considered the need for representation of gender the way Butler spoke about it – “for the most part,” she writes in the opening paragraph, “feminist theory has assumed that there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued.” The language of a _pursuit_ of representation confused Harry on a fundamental level – did one really need to pursue representation? Wasn’t it already guaranteed? _Well_ , Harry thought, subconsciously starting to challenge his privileged ways of thinking, _maybe there aren’t a whole lot of women in government. I guess._ But then Butler struck – does the category of “woman” even exist? Who fits in this category? More importantly, who _doesn’t_ fit? Harry quickly began to wonder if “woman” should be the rallying point for feminist theory and action after all. His head was spinning; he had only just begun to understand what a feminist was in the first place. He had a feeling he would need quite a bit of supplementary reading - Beauvoir? Kristeva? Irigaray? Definitely Foucault, whoever he was, and maybe Wittig too - in order to fully understand the claims Butler was making.

Harry noticed a pattern arise in the first chapter. Butler would make what appeared to be a claim that rung true with Harry, but then refute it for multiple pages using rhetoric the likes of which made Harry want to duck, cover his face with his hands, and shout _yes, yes, I believe you, okay_ , even if he had no understanding whatsoever of what she was arguing. Harry suspected Hermione would have an easier time with this, despite her stereotypical white liberal leanings.

He decided to write her a letter, and since he figured it might be best to put the book down until he got a response, he sent the book off with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Judith Butler, _Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity_ (Routledge, 1990), 2.


End file.
